King County prosecutors have charged a 20-year-old Kent man with first-degree animal cruelty for allegedly starving a puppy to death in his abandoned apartment.<\/p>\n
Andre O. Johnson is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 12 at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent, according to an e-mail from Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors charged Johnson Sept. 29 based on a probable cause document filed Sept. 9 by Sgt. David Morris, an animal-control officer with Regional Animal Services of King County. A summons has been issued for Johnson to appear in court. He has not served any time in jail because of the alleged incident.<\/p>\n
Johnson reportedly failed to provide adequate food and water to Bones, a pit bull puppy, between Nov. 12, 2009 and Dec. 10, 2009, according to charging papers.<\/p>\n
Managers of the Waterford on the Lakes Apartments in Kent reported to animal control Dec. 10 that they discovered a dead pit-bull puppy in the bedroom closet of a unit during an abandoned property inspection.<\/p>\n
Morris said he arrived to find the puppy with its ribs, spine and hip bones readily seen. A veterinarian performed a necropsy that concluded the puppy died of starvation and dehydration.<\/p>\n
Johnson told Morris in a phone interview that a former roommate had bought the puppy.<\/p>\n
Johnson assumed ownership when the roommate abandoned the brindle-and-white pit bull in September 2009. Johnson said he played with the dog and bought it food.<\/p>\n
Johnson moved into the Waterford apartments in September 2009. During a maintenance inspection on Nov. 15, apartment personnel found the puppy in a feces and urine littered bathroom and notified Johnson in writing to clean up after his pet.<\/p>\n
Johnson said he last saw the dog Dec. 5 and thought \u201cthe dog was getting skinny.\u201d<\/p>\n
He determined the dog had worms through Internet research, but did not take the puppy to a veterinarian.<\/p>\n
Maintenance personnel changed the locks on the apartment Dec. 10 because Johnson had abandoned the unit.<\/p>\n
The puppy was found dead in the closet, severely emaciated and lying next to a bowl of dried dog kibble. There was no water to be found anywhere in the apartment, according to Morris\u2019 report.<\/p>\n
As owner of the puppy, Johnson was clearly criminally negligent when he did not provide adequate food or water to the dog, Morris wrote in court documents.<\/p>\n
Morris also wrote that Johnson did not return further requests to contact him.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohnson, as the owner of Bones, was clearly criminally negligent when he did not provide adequate food and water, and as a result the dog suffered substantial and unjustifiable physical pain and died of starvation and dehydration,\u201d Morris stated in the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
King County prosecutors have charged a 20-year-old Kent man with first-degree animal cruelty for allegedly starving a puppy to death in his abandoned apartment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16563"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}